Perpetual Pavement: Structured for the Future

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来源：Asphalt Pavement Alliance 发布日期：2007-11-19

Just imagine it: Total pavement reconstruction, the remove-and-replace option, is rendered virtually obsolete. The only pavement rehabilitation needed would be surface replacement at about 20-year intervals.

With Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA), we have the technology to achieve just that. We call it Perpetual Pavement. The concept is not a new one. In fact, fulldepth and deep-strength asphalt pavement structures have been built since the 1960s. Today, recent efforts in materials selection, mixture design, performance testing, and pavement design offer a methodology to obtain performances exceeding 50 years from asphalt pavement structures, while periodically replacing the pavement surface and recycling the old pavement material.

Perpetual Pavements have three distinct features: a rut-resistant and wear-resistant surface layer; a rut-resistant, durable intermediate layer; and a combination of adequate asphalt thickness and flexibility to resist deep fatigue cracking.

“Perpetual Pavement is engineered so that any distress that occurs is confined to the upper pavement layer,” explains David Newcomb, vice president for research and technology at the National Asphalt Pavement Association. “At some point in time, say, at about 20-plus years, you go back and mill out the surface and replace it with a new surface.”

Maintaining a Perpetual Pavement can be compared to maintaining a house or any other structure. The owner may choose to paint it, put a new roof on it, or add to it. With Perpetual Pavement, contractors can maintain and even enhance an aging pavement, rather than breaking it up and hauling it away to a landfill, because the original structure is still sound and has great value.

In addition, the process is environmentally friendly because the pavement material that is milled off is 100 percent recyclable. Recent research has shown that the asphalt pavement industry is the nation''s number one recycler.

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